Starting again, again,.

great positive post pat.

Sometimes in recovery we have nothing gamblewise to report so a bit reading here and there blows the old gremlins cobwebs away.

Well done on your recovery this far,

best wishes,

W.P

Boxing Day, and every other day in the year, are so, so much better when they are not spent throwing away all of our hard-earned money gambling.

Keep up with the great work and resolve, look forward to raising a virtual glass to each other on New Years Eve next year when we are both still on that list!

GT

Thanks for your post pat,appreciate the support,well done for getting through xmas gamble free,its not an easy time,but its sounds like you have had a great one.My little incident has been a test of my resolve,but i know too well i would make the situation ten times worse by giving all my money to the bookies.keep strong my friend.

Well done pat and glad christmas went well.

Im still gamble free and christmas was always a bad time as our business always shuts down.Been busy and also had time to relax whereas before no matter how much i had to do i always had time for the bookies.

Keep strong Denis

hi Pat...only just noticed your diary here as been too in the thick of it all..relationship ending etc...am glad you had a good Xmas and are gamble free Pat...its brilliant ...i will read your diary in full xxx take care ...xx

Am so delighted I have been able to see out 2011 gamble free, it did not feel possible back in September , I need to say a big thank you to many people on here who really helped me along the way.

Happy new year to all, here is hoping we all have a great 2012.

Hi Pat,

Just caught up on your diary. I must say what an amazing achievement. I love to read people's diaries. The ones which are successful inspire me so much. I started my own recovery 6 weeks ago I feel so much better now. I will take your idea and give myself a quid for each day next year. 365 to spend. All the best for 2012 mate.

cheese on toast!

I have a new name and a new diary. It was near the top at 8.30am today.

my OH found an entry on my old diary on Sat. (My s**t computer froze, unbeknown to me, when I turned it off, so she opened it up with my 'day 61' entry staring her in the face. She read it).

I lied my way out of it. Fortunately, because it was frozen, she couldn't access the other pages, and she's not computer-savvy enough go into 'history' etc and find it that way. I really wish I hadn't had to do it (lie), but there was no other way. I might tell her all in the future, but now is the wrong time. It is worse lying than having a secret.

Gamcare, I'm afraid, were not great. I frantically emailed them three times to ask them to take down my diary (my OH phoned me immediately she read the page, I was at work, and I dashed to a computer and went straight to an adviser). They didn't have the authority, and the admin officer was off (bank hol weekend). So I deleted as many as I could in the time available. Like I said, my OH didn't see the rest (altho I didn't really know that her comp skills were so basic, so I was blooming lucky). Anyway, they might delete it now, unfortunately, since it means a lot to me.

Please pop by my new diary sometime, and please don't use my name!

thanks Pat

...and I want to be number 100. congrats on your continuing lack of gambling!

Back at work this morning, had a lovely Christmas and new year.

now back to reality, I had a look at the debt I have weighing me down and it is split across one loan and one credit card, only one loan as I consolidated my debt in July last year, the credit card contains what I lost between then and September.

1. Loan, total owed is 20,500, current repayments will see this paid in 37 months.

2. Credit card, total owed is 3,985 at 200 per month this will take 2 years. Will try and over pay the CC as much as possible to reduce the time.

Not great reading but it is what it is, I lost it so now I need to fix this. At the moment it looks like debt free date will be Feb 2015, at this point I will be 1,242 days gamble free 🙂

hi Pat,

Pls don't apologise for telling stories on my diary; it's good for me to hear them. Actually, and shamefully, if truth be known i was experiencing the 'thrill of the chase' when I was reading about your losses, and then your big gambles,and your losses...I'm not making it up, for a brief second I missed it all, and that's the first time for 65 days I've felt it. It was a wake-up call for me, a little prod to remind me that the demon still lurks within...

...and i'll give you a similar tale. In 2005, when my marriage split up (not due to gambling, I should add), I had a binge gamble. I now know that stress is one of the triggers, along with alcohol, and so here i was, billy no-mates, at noon stuck in front of the computer playing BJ on a well-known snooker-sponsoring site. I'd had my ups and downs, my cash outs and too many deposits, and I'd lost several days running, but through some good play and discipline with my stakes (unusual for me) I'd amassed $10,000. I reckoned I'd spent about £4000, so i was something like £3000 up at the current exchange rates.

I remember it clearly...I went for a walk with the dog, and in my mind I spent the money...£7000 coming into the account...£4000 to clear overdraft...£2000 to clear credit card...£1000 to...what? A holiday (God know I needed it, my wife had left me)? Or, start redecorating the house? it was then 'The Plan' was hatched.

I would gamble the whole lot on max-stakes BJ in a mad double-or-nothing, last-time gamble. Max stakes was $300 per hand, I played 3 hands simultaneously each round, so $900 a time, or approx 11 rounds.

Whether the programming is different at these stakes or what,I don't know. All I know is that I was wiped out. I can't remember exactly, but the dealer had maybe 3 bjs, the other times I just got jacksh1t 17s or bust. It was gone in maybe 5 minutes.

Partly due to that, and partly due to wife issues, I cried. Obviously, though, it wasn't enough to stop me, so that's why I'm here now. It took children to stop me.

Working out a debt-free date is a good exercise, if I ever get this money from the tax credit people I'm going to do it too.

Mind how you go, Pat.

Of course the programming was different for those stakes. "They're" not daft. "They" know what "they're" doing.

"Their" only job is to take money from vulnerable people who seem to think that they have beaten the "system".

Sad isn't it?

GT

But are they different, GT? I mean, what about all that bo110cks about independent verifying, and so on? They are supposed to be regulated to some extent, with ind auditors etc, no? Are they really so cheap as to fiddle the odds at higher stakes? Common sense would tell you that they would prefer to entice people in deeper, and to encourage people to make bigger stakes. I'm not saying they're angels, but surely I'm not worth fiddling when there's bigger fish to fry.

Nice use of 'they're' and 'their', btw 😉

119 days, 17 weeks.

I had a bit of a bad day yesterday where something just did not go my way, i was is a cr** mood because of it and out of no where i fancied having a bet.... 17 f*****g weeks in and the first thought when something goes against me is to have a bet... i did not bet and the idea (stupid as it was) passed quickly but i felt absolutely disgusted with myself....

Woke up this morning and the mood had improved somewhat, i know this is a one day at a time approach for me but yesterday really felt like a setback.

I guess i need to just move on from this and keep strong. Good luck to everyone on here, keep strong.